Foreign affairs

If you believe the Castro regime, Cuba is the only nation in the world that provides aid to other countries without ever asking for anything in return.

Earthquake in Pakistan? Cuba will send a team of doctors to help out. Tsunami disaster in Indonesia? No worries. The Cubans will be there helping the ever-grateful locals. Mudslide in Peru? Ditto.

These acts of “solidarity” have underpinned Castro’s diplomatic strategy for the best part of 50 years, especially since the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s.

And it’s been a highly successful strategy, too.

It means that even today, the Castro regime continues to enjoy the unqualified support of most Third World countries. Through thick and thin.

Here is just one example of how it works.

Over the past few days, the Cuban official media have reported extensively on a brief visit to Havana by Patterson Oti, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Solomon Islands, a former British protectorate in the middle of the Pacific.

A relatively poor and strife-torn nation of some 450,000 inhabitants, the Solomons is kept afloat financially by aid from Australia and New Zealand.

It's as far from Havana geographically as you can imagine.

Still, according to this report from the official Cuban newsagency, the visit by Mr Oti has been a huge success.

So much so that Cuba has agreed to send a “medical brigade” to the Solomons while also offering scholarships to 50 young Islanders to study medicine in Cuba.

Coincidentally, the government of the Solomons has given an assurance that it will continue to support the Castro regime “at international forums”, including voting against the US “blockade”.

See? No strings attached.